After proposing my project, I began thinking more in-depth about the game I wanted to create. I wanted it to be a simple puzzle game with story aspects, and to be able to recruit characters by playing special courses. I decided that the setting would be light fantasy, but I wanted to give the protagonist character a unique skill in order to set them apart from the recruitable characters.

 After picking which silhouette I liked best (second from top left), I started working into them further, adding details like clothes. I went through many iterations for this design, as I felt it was important to create a striking and unique protagonist design; one aspect of mobile games (particularly those aimed at female players) I don't particularly like is the protagonist's face never being shown. Because of this, I wanted to create an exciting protagonist design.

 Even at this point, I couldn't decide which design I liked best as I had created quite a few designs. I brought two designs into the colour stage to play with colour iterations, to see which I liked better. I had also decided that I wanted each character to be based on one of four attributes, for which I picked out Dawn, Day, Dusk, and Night. I wanted the Protagonist to follow the theme of 'dusk', so I used lots of purples and blues when working through colour iteration.
 I had recently been watching tokusatsu series Kamen Rider Ex-Aid, a live-action TV show featuring lots of special effects, which is where the Japanese genre name ”特撮” tokusatsu (SFX) comes from. (Although this isn't a video game, the plotline is ironically about doctors fighting against 'game illness'.) The characters are bright and vivid, working a lot of unusual or neon colours into their designs. I think the inspiration for this is apparent in the second set of designs, as a lot more weird or bright colours started making their way into the designs; (bright orange-red, gold-yellow, purple and brighter greens). I was really drawn to the bright orange-red accents on the protagonist, and decided that they would recur in future designs for this project.


At this point, I had finally decided which design I wanted to keep for my protagonist. After playing around with the design of the quill pen a little more (as I thought the pale pen seemed like it blended in to pale backgrounds too much), I drew up the design of my now-complete protagonist.